Exam 8: Behavior in Social and Cultural Context

According to Stanley Milgram, willingness to obey an authority is tied to the personalities of the participants rather than being tied to situational factors.

A state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent is known as:

Groupthink occurred when NASA officials insulated themselves from the objections of dissenting engineers and made the fatal decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger.

The validity effect is the tendency of people to believe that a statement is true simply because it has been repeated many times.

In variations of Stanley Milgram's study of obedience, people were more likely to disobey when the experimenter left the room.

What is cognitive dissonance? Provide an example that illustrates how cognitive dissonance can lead people to change their attitudes. Make sure to explain the cause of the cognitive dissonance in your example.

Altruism is the willingness to take selfless or dangerous action on behalf of others.

Solomon Asch set up an experiment in which eight people were shown a 10-inch line, and they had to choose the line (from a group of three) that matched the original line in length. Through this experiment, Asch was studying:

Entrapment occurs when someone in authority asks you to do something, and you want to disobey, but instead you agree to do it.

In Stanley Milgram's study of obedience, the "learners" actually received very significant levels of shock.

________ are the rules that regulate social life within a culture.

One way in which stereotypes can distort reality is that:

Juan believes that all "Anglos" are uptight and cold, and he won't listen to any evidence that contradicts his belief. This example illustrates a case of:

As part of the indoctrination process used by terrorist groups and cults, as soon as a person is a committed believer, the leader is most likely to:

Benevolent sexism is harmless.

When people observe that a social norm has been violated, they are more likely to violate it themselves.

Most people are overly pessimistic about their own abilities, competence, and other good qualities.

Entrapment is a gradual process in which individuals escalate their commitment to a course of action to justify their investment of time, money, or effort.

According to attribution theory, the explanations we give for our behavior and the behavior of others generally fall into two categories:

When we make situational attributions, we are identifying the cause of an action as something: